A rant on education

The value of education is obvious, but there are few who take up the mantle and accept the challenge even smart people are amongst the masses. If caught young enough a child can reap great benefits from education in later years, especially when looking for a job. It is like using the strongest muscle in the body, their brain becomes anathema. So with great sadness may working class parents do not encourage and help their children in this area. I know as I have witnessed this with members of my own family. Guided learning and help has to be done continuously from a very early age. To the point, the idea of sitting and spending time just studying has to become habit and not a tortuous event. It then becomes automatic. Otherwise there is a fight with the other side of the mind, the lazy side. The side which falls into bed with procrastination and games and video's and trash TV. The side which just can not be bothered. Many kids will even say "whatever" or "am I bothered" and when they do they are saying it out of complete and utter ignorance of the future. Of a world which could be.

The concept of the future and the years ahead a child has are like the blind spot on an elephant reversing. If I could go back in time to myself and could have a single conversation, it would be one in which I would do everything I possibly could to instill a motivation to learn. I would map out on a piece of paper a single horizontal line. The beginning would say birth, the end death, and a portion perhaps about one sixth I'd note as childhood. Then I'd state, you are only a child for this part of your life, the rest of it you will be an adult. The educational level you decide to attain here as a child may then dictate your future. How much money you might earn for the rest of your life. I say might because things may happen, where you are in the right place at the right time. But if they do not happen, then your early years education will predict your income. I would encourage and aid in every way I could this importance. I would demonstrate to the young me the poverty of the world, the pain and the hard graft of people just to make ends meet. I would make this happen in such a way as to say, education is a life or death decision. Because in reality it is.

Unfortunately it seems this value for education is not understood or accepted by a lot of parents. Which can make me ask the question do parents really want the best for their children if they don't actually help them? If they don't sit down and encourage their offspring or learn the same subjects their child is studying? And together push for a better life. Unconsciously Freud would say, parents do not want their children to do any better than they themselves, it would harbour resentment if not pride.

A procrastination of the real world would state there is not always time to both sit with children, help them and to earn money from work, buy food to eat, clothes to wear etc. Time just is not there. Oh what a procrastination this is as well. Because there must be time, because if you don't give it time then, children will follow the footsteps of their parents. Their life will be no better.

I understand as individual we all have freedom of choice to make mistakes, to accept or not accept things. But not accepting the value of education is like being an ostrich and hiding your head in the sand. Not acting and providing help and encouragement in education is like a flock of ostriches putting their head in the sand. Oh well, perhaps sand has qualities I haven't thought about.